Southern Middle

The students at Southern Middle School used technology to win themselves more technology; a $3,500 grant to buy more high-tech equipment.The school in Lothian is among 11 winners of a Bell Atlantic Corp. promotion.Grants were awarded based on which schools' supporters made the most calls to a toll-free telephone number last spring. Corporate officials presented the award yesterday.Principal Deborah Montgomery said Southern Middle used its automated calling system for a week to ask every parent to help win the grant.

The State Board of Education last week granted Anne Arundel County Public Schools' request for a waiver of the 180-day school calendar requirement for Southern Middle School, allowing the last day of class for students to occur on Thursday, June 13. School officials said the early closing is necessary to help facilitate the move of Lothian Elementary School into space at Southern Middle while the new Lothian Elementary is built over the next two...

Steve Ferralli returned to Southern Middle School in Lothian yesterday with a new heart but the same soul - full of the energy, warmth and humor that have marked his 26-year teaching career. "Mr. Ferralli's back!" some pupils shouted as they entered his classroom. They hadn't seen him since September, when he abruptly left school one morning to rush to Washington Hospital Center for a heart transplant. After two weeks in the hospital and four long months at home, the technical education teacher returned to the classroom yesterday.

Storm-related closings • Schools Public schools Anne Arundel schools are open two hours late, except 17 schools without power that remain closed: Arlington Echo; Belvedere Elementary; Deale Elementary; Edgewater Elementary; Ferndale Early Education Center; Georgetown East Elementary; Glendale Elementary; Jones Elementary; Linthicum Elementary; Lothian Elementary; Magothy River Middle; Northeast High School; Richard Henry...

Southern Middle School is so crowded that south county parents are willing to have school boundaries redrawn or their eighth-graders sent to Southern High School to ease the situation.A panel of south county parents has asked county school officials to study the cost of both alternatives to help them decide which temporary solution is preferable.The request stems from the results of a spring survey of parents from all the schools that feed into Southern High School in Harwood.The survey showed support for redistricting -- which likely would send some students to Central Middle School in Edgewater -- and for creating what would be the county's only five-year high school.

A gaggle of teen-age girls stops in a hallway at Southern Middle School to admire a manicure. A bunch of boys tussles and hollers.But not for long as Terry Smith intervenes. "Move along, keep going," she says. "Don't yell. Slow down."The students simmer down and climb the staircase, but not because Smith is a teacher. She is a bus driver, the mother of a sixth-grader and among 108 volunteers in the school's MOST program -- Monitoring Our School Together.In August, Southern Middle became the first Anne Arundel County school to start the program, which stations adults in the hallways to prevent trouble and keep 970 students moving.

The way Steve Ferralli teaches -- dashing down aisles, firing questions, cracking jokes -- he makes so much noise you can hardly hear the swooshing of his artificial heart pump. And the way he moves -- with energy and purpose -- you'd never guess he left Washington Hospital Center slightly more than a month ago with only the right side of his heart functioning. He was there for five months, getting treatment for inflammation of the heart muscle. With the left side of his heart badly deteriorated, Ferralli is relying on a 5-pound mechanical pump, about the size of a water canteen, that surgeons implanted in his stomach cavity.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening threw his support behind a 460-seat addition planned for North County High School in Ferndale yesterday, recommending that the project receive $4.2 million in state money. The announcement occurred as the governor handed out the last $99 million of next year's $295 million school construction budget. Anne Arundel County received a total of $5.3 million yesterday, some of which will go toward renovating Southern Middle School in Lothian. "I know [County Executive Janet S.]

Starting high school is a frightening experience for most students, but imagine doing it at 12 or 13. That's what Southern Middle School's seventh-grade graduating class faces in a few months when it walks through the doors of Southern High School one year early. To ease the fast-forward introduction to high school -- which began three years ago because of severe crowding at Southern Middle -- teachers from the middle and high schools developed a transition program for some of the high school-bound seventh-graders.

Anne Arundel County cannot afford to overhaul two middle schools, the county auditor said yesterday as she called for cutting plans for renovations at Brooklyn Park and Southern middle schools from the Gary administration's capital budget.The recommendations, among $15 million in cuts suggested during a county council work session by auditor Teresa Sutherland, brought angry exchanges in council chambers and lawsuit threats from North County residents."I have been advocating a class-action suit probably for, say, the last five years."

Along a road in Wamunyu, Kenya, sits a water tank with a sign that reads: "This tank was built with funds from Southern MS, Lothian, MD, USA. " During the Thanksgiving holiday, Southern Middle School teacher Laura Groo visited the East African country to see the water tank firsthand and relish the fruits of a school read-a-thon project last year that raised more than $3,000 to finance the tank. The read-a-thon was so successful that there were funds left over, which were used to buy gym equipment for Kyamatula Primary School, where the water tank is located.

For half of the children at Tracey's Elementary School, the real first day at their school didn't roll around until January. The Tracys Landing school was closed for renovation three and a half years ago, and all the students were shipped to a nearby middle school in southern Anne Arundel County - the only school that students in kindergarten and first and second grade had ever known. Now the youngest students - and their older peers and the staff - are getting used to a completely redone and practically unrecognizable building.

The Anne Arundel County school board loses its most senior member this week, as Michael J. McNelly of Tracy's Landing attends the last of a decade's worth of meetings. The 59-year-old advocate for equitable wages often drew authority for his opinions from his life experiences as a military brat, juvenile delinquent, labor negotiator and a veteran of the Anne Arundel County Police Department and the Vietnam War. Now, McNelly said, he is considering what other activities he might take on to fill the 30-plus hours a week he sometimes spent on county school board business.

Steve Ferralli returned to Southern Middle School in Lothian yesterday with a new heart but the same soul - full of the energy, warmth and humor that have marked his 26-year teaching career. "Mr. Ferralli's back!" some pupils shouted as they entered his classroom. They had not seen him since September, when he abruptly left school one morning to rush to Washington Hospital Center for a heart transplant. After two weeks in the hospital and four months at home, the technical education teacher returned to the classroom yesterday.

Three weeks after returning to Southern Middle School with an artificial heart pump implanted in his chest, teacher Steve Ferralli has a new heart. Ferralli got his new heart at Washington Hospital Center. Doctors also removed the pump that had allowed Ferralli to return to teaching last month despite his failing heart. He had expected to teach with the pump for months. But at 9 a.m. Friday, Washington Hospital Center called Southern Middle in Lothian and told the principal to arrange to get Ferralli to the hospital by noon.

The way Steve Ferralli teaches -- dashing down aisles, firing questions, cracking jokes -- he makes so much noise you can hardly hear the swooshing of his artificial heart pump. And the way he moves -- with energy and purpose -- you'd never guess he left Washington Hospital Center slightly more than a month ago with only the right side of his heart functioning. He was there for five months, getting treatment for inflammation of the heart muscle. With the left side of his heart badly deteriorated, Ferralli is relying on a 5-pound mechanical pump, about the size of a water canteen, that surgeons implanted in his stomach cavity.

Thirty percent of students at the six Anne Arundel County schools with the most bomb threats skipped out yesterday on an extra day of school that was supposed to help compensate for lost instruction time.And one of the schools -- open because students have missed class time due to seven evacuations for bomb threats this year -- received its eighth threat yesterday and missed more time.Schools Superintendent Carol S. Parham called the makeup day a success; at least one parent, though, described it as a "stupidity act."

Starting high school is a frightening experience for most students, but imagine doing it at 12 or 13. That's what Southern Middle School's seventh-grade graduating class faces in a few months when it walks through the doors of Southern High School one year early. To ease the fast-forward introduction to high school -- which began three years ago because of severe crowding at Southern Middle -- teachers from the middle and high schools developed a transition program for some of the high school-bound seventh-graders.

When classes change and the halls at Southern Middle School in Lothian fill with chattering pupils, the sixth-graders in Barbara Maddox's class stay glued to their seats - and to their books. The commotion outside - in the real world - doesn't stir them from their fantasy worlds. One child is engrossed in Moby Dick. Another is tackling The Big Wave by Pearl S. Buck. A third is following Harry Potter on his latest flight of fancy. As part of Anne Arundel County's new sixth-grade reading program, pupils read the book of their choice from the school's library for 25 minutes every day. The extended class period runs 100 minutes or more, meaning schools are devoting one-third of the day to reading and language arts.